I've lost interest so here are my final thoughts. Hopefully the next bump is from someone solving it.
I assume the 256*256 image is all that there is. I believe the creator put effort and meaning into it that may go somewhat deep, but I highly doubt there is a re-arrangement or process that makes the dots make sense. If there is, it's a puzzle which is lame.
It seems too art focused to be worth exploring further. Just as a puzzle it was fun to explore this past month, but without any leads it has become a pretty boring puzzle. It seems contrived that it would be this difficult to sort out the fundamentals of a real alien message. Understanding alien intent would be incredibly hard yet understanding just a single thing about the data values should be relatively easy.
It's been a great case study for Hapax at least. Great to see people coming together to solve a problem and how that dynamic works. Was really interesting how many crackpots were sure their stupid ideas were correct. People moderating the discord were nice but I believe the openness was a hindrance towards productive discussion. For Hapax it shows that even if I have engaged fans wanting to work together, poor group structure could stop them from making progress. Also interesting how a community falls apart without any advances. I think Hapax should do better since it's such a massive game and players could make lots of parallel progress on multiple mysteries simultaneously.
Still though, it makes me wonder if Hapax's greatest mysteries will go unsolved. That'd be a huge bummer lol. I really want to talk about what I've been doing for ten years!